In the last blog I vented my most annoying compliance issue. This week I thought I would switch gears to my most amusing and embarrassing Quality moments.
There are three that are so vivid that it’s as if they happened yesterday.
I had an interesting conversation this week on the topic of risk. As you may know, risk is the combination of consequence (what happens) and likelihood (chance of it happening). The concept of consequence is generally easy to understand, but likelihood is sometimes a source of contention.
This particular conversation was concerning the determination of the criticality of a piece of equipment and centered around whether likelihood should be based on the history of the circumstances you are considering. My colleague was arguing that the chances of this particular piece of equipment to fail was directly tied to the failure rate of this piece of equipment at this point in time (Historic). I asserted that the chances of failure is more of a statistical or general probability (Experiential). Continue reading
Frequently in my work as a systems engineer I’m faced with producing several artifacts for a project, typically a system architecture, model(s), requirements, safety analysis and risk analysis (management plan).
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With the recent go-live of the ACA (Obamacare) website we saw another example of a complex project introduction go badly. There are a host of reasons for the problems, requirements changing, insufficient testing, and no one person leading the effort. And just the scope of a project required to meet the needs of millions. One has to wonder if a risk management plan was done for this project and followed through the design process. On a side note, where I live the Washington State website actually met customer needs and was easy to navigate. So scope does have an impact. Continue reading